


black and blue

by theundiagnosable



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, buti .... do not believe it, inspired by my genuine concern for mitch marner every time he steps onto an NHL rink, like objectively i know hes 6 ft tall and almost 200 lb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 23:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9629114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theundiagnosable/pseuds/theundiagnosable
Summary: hockey is a rough game. (5 times Mitch gets hurt + 1 time Auston does)





	

I.

Mitch takes a hit and doesn’t get up.

At first, Auston doesn’t pay much attention – Marns is smaller enough than most guys that every check he takes looks worse than it is – and keeps tracking the puck from the bench, watching as the Caps bring it up the ice ‘til Marty manages to clear it. 

It’s only then that Auston realizes Mitch is still down. He’s doubled over on his hands and knees, chest heaving.

Somehow, without realizing it, Auston’s on his feet. “Marns is hurt,” he says, unnecessarily – the whistle’s already blown, trainers skating over to where the refs are crouched down next to Mitch.

By the time Mitch gets to his feet, a million or a billion years later, the crowd is chattering, bored by the lack of play. _He’s hurt_ , Auston thinks, and the words stick in his head, playing on a loop. He should probably be able to hear the guys saying something behind him. He doesn’t.

The trainers skate Mitch off the ice, and Auston’s in his own head for the rest of the game. Time crawls for a period and a half, and when the buzzer finally sounds, he doesn’t follow the rest of the team to the locker room.

He wonders where the line is, between being a good bro and being straight up needy. Wonders when he stopped caring.

Mitch is sitting on the examination table in the middle of the trainer’s room when Auston finds him, just in a t-shirt and his underarmour. He looks small, sitting there with his legs dangling over the edge, and something about the sight tugs at Auston’s gut.

Mitch lights up when he sees Auston in the doorway. “I cannot _believe_ you bastards lost in OT again.”

Auston ignores him and crosses the room in three strides, still in his skates; he tugs at the bottom of Mitch’s shirt, impatient.

“Not even going to wine and dine me first, huh?” Mitch teases.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“I’m a classy broad, Matthews,” Mitch says, but lets Auston lift his shirt enough to see the white bandages wrapped around his ribs. His skin is dark purple where it peeks out around the bandages, and now that he’s close, Auston can see that he’s breathing shallow, like he’s scared to move.

“Fuck,” Auston breathes.

“It’s not broken,” Mitch says, like he’s repeating someone else’s words. “Just cracked. Could’ve been worse.”

“How long?”

Mitch’s whole face falls. “A month. Three weeks, if I’m lucky.”

He doesn’t sound lucky. He sounds _sad_ , and that’s somehow worse, how not-Mitch he looks. Auston wants to do – something. Make it better. Make him smile again, even if it’s fake. It’s dumb.

“Hey,” Auston says, useless. “Marns. Sorry.” He smoothes Mitch’s shirt back down, careful to avoid touching his ribcage. He’s suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he’s still in all his hockey gear, tall on his skates while Mitch is in a t-shirt. He feels too big, clumsy. “Want to go home?”

Mitch nods, toys with the hem of his shirt. Then he frowns, just a little. “You’re going to shower first, though, right?”

Auston grins, “Nah,” shakes his head so that drops of sweat go flying off in every direction. It’s gross, the kind of shit that pretty much got phased out of locker rooms in high school, but it makes Mitch laugh, so.

He’ll take it. 

Auston drives them home that night. He’s not sure if there are any official rules about driving with a broken rib, but it seems like a better-safe-than-sorry situation. Getting Mitch to hand over the keys to his truck is an ordeal, carried out in the sub-zero parking garage. He probably should have expected that.

“Matts,” Mitch says, extremely seriously. “If you crash my car I’ll kill you. Then coach’ll be mad at you for making me exacerbate my injury, then he’ll kill you again. Then I’ll resurrect and kill you a third time.”

“Why’re you dead in this scenario?” Auston asks, choosing to focus on that instead of the many other things wrong with that sentence. He shuffles from one foot to the other, freezing. They probably should have had this discussion inside.

“Because I exacerbated my cracked rib, Auston, keep up.”

It takes Mitch almost ten minutes to hand over the keys, and Auston’s still not sure he’s using the word ‘exacerbate’ right, but they eventually make it to Mitch’s building.

He looks surprised when Auston parks the car and gets out instead of dropping him at the door. “You guys are leaving on a roadie tomorrow.”

“So?”

Mitch turns around, but not fast enough to hide a smile.

It takes a while for Mitch change into sweats. There’s a ridiculous moment where Auston almost offers to help and catches himself just in time to avoid a lifetime’s worth of chirping – and, like, what would he even have said, “bro, I can help you pull your pants down”? Fuck, no.

They settle in on opposite ends of the bed like kids at a sleepover. Auston knows he’s hovering. He does it anyways, tugging at the neck of his too-small borrowed t-shirt. “D’you need more pillows? Your meds?”

“Quit mom-ing me, I’m older than you.” Mitch shoves his bare feet towards Auston’s face, then hisses, “Ow, ow, fuck, bad idea.” There’s not much horsing around after that, both of them tired enough by the game to want some sleep.

Turns out Mitch hogs the blankets. It seems like the kind of thing Auston should’ve guessed. And, okay –

Auston doesn’t mean to stay up all night. It’s not like it’s intentional. Not like he’s keeping watch. Just, Mitch makes these weird little snuffly sounds, sometimes, like his breath is catching with pain when he moves wrong. The first couple of times it happens, Auston sits bolt upright, certain that Mitch has done something awful; like, punctured a lung and is about to drown in his own blood awful.

 It’s probably not that. Duh, Matthews, it’s not that, because Mitch is still alive. Doesn’t stop a tugging in Auston’s stomach, unpleasant and panicked, every time he hears Mitch make that hurt little sound.

Eventually, about two hours before his alarm, Auston is falls asleep watching the rise and fall of Mitch’s chest. When he wakes up, the sun’s barely started rising, peering through the blinds and casting stripey shadows along the floor.

Mitch is still asleep.  

Auston takes care getting out of bed, trying to avoid jostling Mitch too much. It’s obscenely early – he’s going to be a mess for the game tonight – and he splashes cold water on his face in the bathroom. It wakes him up, mostly. Sort of mostly.

He gets dressed as quietly as possible, puts a glass of water and a couple of the painkillers on the bedside table. Then, struck with an idea, rummages through Mitch’s cupboards, finds a half-full box of chocolate chip cookies, and puts that on the table too, because that’s what his mom always did when he was sick.

He’s going to miss the plane if he doesn’t go now. Mitch is still asleep.

“Bye,” he says, because it might be weird to just leave. Mitch doesn’t wake up. It’d for sure be weird to stay, after that, so Auston shoulders his bag and tips the door shut behind him.

 

II.

It’s a fucking gorgeous play, is the funny part, until Marns stops it with his face.

The special teams are scrimmaging, four-on-four, practice all but done. Naz steals the rebound after Auston’s shot, booking it past half the team and over the blue line; Auston’s sprinting after him, legs burning, sees the streaks of blue at his heels as the rest of the guys catch up, can’t get there in time and watches Naz wind up and send the puck soaring. Top shelf, or it would be, if Mitch didn’t manage to get in front of the net at exactly the wrong time.

Auston’s still at least five feet back, but he winces at the impact. The mouthguard goes flying right out of Mitch’s mouth, which is the actual most self-defeating thing Auston’s ever seen. Mitch, for his part, doesn’t go down. It looks like a close thing.

“Oh, fuck,” Naz drops his stick, skating over to Mitch, who’s doubled over, clutching his mouth. There’re little specks of blood all along the ice, bright red under the lights. “Sorry, sorry.”

“’s fine.” Mitch waves him off, starts to skate off the ice. He’s on his feet, so the guys start joking around, “Hey, nice save, Marns.”, “How come he never does that during a game?”, dumb stuff like that. Mitch flips them all off, bloody and looking like something out of a scary movie.

He’s probably fine. Auston wonders if it’d be too desperate to follow him, debates doing it anyways. He doesn’t get a chance – Mike barely waits til Mitch is gone before starting to corral the rest of the team, “Shootouts, let’s go, boys, get in line. Try not to put anyone else on IR.”

Shootout drill is the same as always, which is to say that it fucking sucks. Like, the shooting at the net part, that’s fun. But if Auston thinks about it for longer than a second, it’s kind of a lose-lose situation – either they can’t score, which means they’re screwed, or they _can_ score, which means that their goalie can’t stop them, which means they’re screwed.

Naz’s last play sapped whatever energy they had left, and they only last about twenty minutes before Coach takes pity on them and lets them leave. Thank _fuck_.

He’s halfway off the ice before he thinks of it, skating over to the bench to look around. And – there. Auston grabs Mitch’s bloody mouthguard – gingerly, and he’s going to have to burn these gloves after because _ew_ – with the intention of leaving it in Marns’ stall; only when he gets to the locker room Mitch is already there, halfway undressed.

“Hey,” Auston says, and definitely fails at sounding anything but embarrassingly relieved. The hit can’t have been that bad, if Mitch is already back. “Catch.”  

Mitch does, on instinct, then realizes what he’s holding and looks way too happy, like Auston just threw him a carton of ice cream instead of the literal grossest thing on the planet. “You saved Jenny!” His voice sounds funny, like they used something to numb his mouth.

Auston passes up on the chance to chirp him for naming his mouthguard in favour of looking him over, surveying the extent of the damage. There’s a row of stitches down his bottom lip, at least five, and the lip itself is swollen ridiculously. Tracking Auston’s gaze, Mitch gives a big, bloody smile, showcasing the new gap in his bottom row of teeth. He looks dumb.

He’s lucky it’s not worse. Doesn’t make it good.

“You look fucking awful,” Auston says, honestly.

Mitch shrugs. “’s not that bad. Really nice shot.”

“Yeah, it was.” Auston tugs off his jersey and padding, gross after a long practice. Mitch watches him, which would maybe be pushing some boundaries of locker room etiquette, if the two of them had ever had anything like boundaries. “I can ask Mo for a drive, if-”

“Nah, it’s good.” Mitch pokes with his tongue at the spot where his tooth used to be, thoughtful. “Do I look like a goon now?”

Auston grabs a towel, ready to head for the showers. “Yeah, in a peewee league.”

Mitch pouts. “It’s not that bad, though, right? Once I get a fake tooth?”

“Yeah, Marns, you’re still pretty.” It’s the same kind of off-the-cuff response Auston’d give to any teammate, but Mitch _preens_ like it was a real compliment. It’s maybe the most Mitch thing he could do, and Auston doesn’t bother trying to hide a smile.

They’ll be fine.

 

III.

They’re ten minutes away from routing Colorado, and Auston thinks he can actually physically hear the crowd waiting for them to fuck it up. If he’s honest, Auston’s kind of doing the same, even though they’ve been playing pretty awesome tonight. No one has to say it: They all want to get Freddie another shutout. The two points’d be nice, too.

Mitch is going for a change, already halfway onto the bench when the hit comes. It’s wholly unnecessary, pure desperation on McKinnon’s part, especially since the next line has already skated out and is rushing the net by the time the hit connects.

Mitch’s own momentum works against him – the shove is enough to send him off balance, tumbling over the boards and straight on top of Auston. He whacks into the bench, arms flailing and ungraceful, legs and torso sprawled across Auston like they’re on the couch watching a movie. It takes Auston a moment to right him. He looks stunned.

Auston taps him on the visor. “You good?”

Mitch blinks. “Ow.”

He must’ve landed on his wrist funny; he’s touching the spot now with his other hand, gingerly, not noticing or not caring that he’s still in Auston’s lap. Auston’s mind goes blank at the realization. He’s not sure where to put his hands. 

“That was a bad hit,” he says, for something to say. He settles on putting his hands around Mitch’s waist, not quite touching but enough to steady him if he falls again. “Should’ve been a call.”

Mitch sighs. Then, just as sudden, he perks up, grins like he’s completely forgotten his maybe-sprained wrist. “Hey Matts,” he says. “Matts. Looks like I fell for you. Get it? _Fell_?”

Despite himself, reluctant, Auston laughs. “You’re so fucking dumb, I’m going to shove you off.”

“You wouldn’t.” That’s maybe his favourite thing about Mitch, when Auston plays along with one of his dumb puns and he smiles like it’s the best present he’s ever gotten, every time.

“Watch me,” Auston threatens, moves his knees up and down to jostle Mitch. It’s enough that Mitch concedes defeat, clambering off of Auston’s lap, clumsy with his hockey gear and injured hand, and elbowing Willy ‘til he makes room on the bench. The whole thing takes, like, twenty seconds, maximum. They’ve still got eight minutes to play.

Auston does not think about the weight of Mitch in his lap. He most definitely doesn’t miss it.

 (The clip of Mitch in Auston’s lap ends up on the internet, with captions like someone read their lips. It gets way too many retweets for the team not to notice it. Fucking ludicrous levels of chirping. Thanks, Sportsnet.)

(He maybe misses it a little.)

 

IV.

‘Rough game’ would probably be an understatement, when they face the Habs near the end of the season. It’s ugly from the first buzzer, everyone trading hits and trying to draw penalties. Both teams are hanging on, tooth and nail, to playoff spots; the crowd’s neck-deep in a rivalry that Auston hasn’t been around for long enough to really appreciate.

The line brawl was probably a matter of time, is the point, here.

Auston skates back a few feet, pulled out of the fray by the linesman. He’s pretty sure he got in a few hits. Now, though, he pulls himself up to his full height, peering over people’s heads to try and find what he’s looking for. There’s Marty, whaling on Weber; Gards, trying to get at someone over the ref’s head. Then- there.

Auston skates forward, reaches in, and grabs Mitch by the collar of his jersey, tugging him out of the mass of bodies.  It’s easy to pull him on his skates, even when he spins around, looking ready to take a swing at Auston ‘til he realizes who it is and relaxes.

“Aw, c’mon, Matts.”

“Don’t be dumb,” Auston says. “Refs are breaking it up, anyways.”

That’s only partially true. The refs are _trying_ to break it up. Not that successfully. Thought that counts, Auston figures.

Mitch spits out Jenny – his mouthguard, Jesus, Auston refuses to use its name – and shrugs out from Auston’s grip. There’s a little trickle of blood down his forehead, and his hair’s all mussed from his long-gone helmet. “I totally had them on the ropes.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Auston says, “what with you being at the bottom of a dog pile, and all.”

Mitch sticks out his tongue and pulls a face. Auston ignores him.

“Lost your helmet,” he observes instead, and waves a hand in front of Mitch’s face for good measure. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two and a thumb,” says Mitch, “I’m not concussed.” He swats Auston’s hand out of the way, trying to get a look at the guys still fighting along the boards. “I think Price might have taken it. The helmet, I mean. Cool, right?” He says it like Carey Price stealing his helmet and trying to fight him is the best thing that’s happened to him in a while. It’s more endearing than it should be.  

“You’re bleeding.” Auston says, so he won’t say anything he can’t take back. “Up there.” Then, as Mitch wipes at the completely wrong side of his head – “No, just- here.” He grabs Mitch’s hand, puts it at the little line of blood.

He doesn’t let his hand linger – there’s enough going on that they probably aren’t on camera, but they _are_ in front of a full arena. Not that there’s anything to see, because –

There isn’t.

Auston leans back on the boards. “Your brain’s gonna fall out.”

“Shut up,” Mitch laughs, and he somehow _still_ managed to miss the blood, so Auston tugs his sleeve down over his hand and reaches up to swipe at Mitch’s forehead. It should be pretty gross, it’s such a fucking mom thing to do, but Mitch grins up at Auston, crooked, and he almost forgets how to breathe.

He really, really wants there to be something to see.

“Hey,” Mitch says, like the thought’s just occurred to him, “how come you look fine?”

“’cause I’m not stupid enough to get punched.” 

Mitch nods, like, ‘fair’. “Why’d you join in, anyways? I didn’t even think you guys saw the hit.”

Auston wonders if Mitch realizes that literally every guy on the team was on their feet the second Mitch went down. Wonders if he knows how they all see him. How Auston sees him.

He shrugs, standing there with Mitch’s blood on his sleeve. It’s going to leave a stain. “Had it coming, I guess.”

 

V.

Auston waits until Brownie’s distracted by a rerun of Cupcake Wars before grabbing his iPad and heading into the hotel hallway. The guy’s a decent roomie, usually, but fails to see the irony in chirping Auston for being “like, gross levels of domestic” even though he visits his parents literally every weekend, like, okay there.  

Auston sits on the ugly green carpet, crosses his legs. The hotel wifi’s pretty shitty, so it takes a while to connect, but eventually the call goes through. Mitch’s face comes up on screen, pale against the brown that Auston recognizes as the colour of his couch.

“ _Finally_ ,” he says, like they’re already in the middle of a conversation. “He remembers I exist! Gone for not even a week and you already forgot your favourite person in the universe.”  

“Hi,” Auston says, because it’s just Mitch being Mitch. “How’re you doing?”

He hates the way his voice goes all soft when he talks to Mitch. It sounds fucking dumb, and he can’t make it stop.

“Everything hurts and I want to die,” Mitch complains, oblivious. Drama queen, even if he is technically on bed rest after their last roadie.

“It’s just the flu,” Auston says.

“You’re just the flu,” says Mitch, which makes zero sense, like, none, but Auston doesn’t get a chance to argue. “I watched the game.”

“And?”

“Brutal agonizing torture,” says Mitch. “You played good, though.”

Auston shrugs off the praise. “Would’ve been better if we won,” he says. “I fucked up the faceoffs third period.”

“Oh, one second, let me get my violin; a goal and an assist in an NHL game, you’re a fucking disgrace.”

“I hate you,” Auston says. He doesn’t. He opposite-of-hates Mitch, actually. It’s getting to be sort of a problem.

“Nah, you don’t,” Mitch says. For a second, he leans out of frame so the only thing on the screen is his couch. Then he’s back, tugging a blanket up near his shoulders.

“Nah, I don’t,” Auston agrees. Then, “I scored for you.” It’s a dumb thing to say, the kind of line you use on a girl when you’re sixteen, not on your teammate. The image of Mitch raises an eyebrow.

“Just one?”

“Greedy,” Auston chides. He for sure doesn’t sound anything but ridiculously fond. It’s probably a good thing he went outside, because he can feel himself smiling like an idiot at his phone. Domestic, Connor’d call it.

“Hey, rude. Gotta respect your elders, Matthews.”

Auston groans, rolling his eyes. “You’re _three months_ older, Marns.”  

Mitch scrunches up his face, puts on his best old man voice. “Don’t give me that sass, sonny-”

“You’re such a brat, oh my god,” Auston laughs, reluctant. Mitch looks way too proud of himself, smiling real big and cheesy. The slow hotel wifi makes the stream glitch, leaving the picture frozen just a second too long; when the video kicks back in, Mitch is cozied down in his blanket, looking up at the camera like he’s thinking.

“Hey,” Auston says, throat suddenly dry.

“Hey back,” Mitch says, then doesn’t say anything else. For a few seconds, they just sit like that, staring. The silence should be awkward, but it’s not. It feels big.

Mitch looks at Auston, sometimes, the same way that Auston thinks he looks at Mitch. And that’s – it could mean a lot.

Auston thinks Mitch would kiss him back, if he kissed him.

And _that_ , that’s – well. 

He touches Mitch’s face on the screen, feels daring even though Mitch has no clue what he’s doing.

“Hey, Aus,” Mitch says. “You miss me yet?”

 “It’s been four days,” Auston says. It’s not an answer.

 

+1.

Auston knows as soon as he goes down that it’s a bad hit. Partly because he hears the entire crowd at the ACC shout and get to their feet at the same time. Partly because his head feels like it’s going to lift off his shoulders, like every thought in his head got knocked loose in favour of just ‘ow’.

Mostly the second thing.

The whistle blows, loud and piercing, and Auston flinches. There’s still two periods left to play, so he grits his teeth and makes himself look up. It’s a bad idea – the arena is literally spinning, which Auston thought only happened in cartoons. It’s the kind of thing he really could have lived with not knowing, to be honest.

By the time he realizes that Chara is leaning over him, concerned, he’s already being pushed out of the way.

“Leave him alone,” Mo takes a knee next to Auston, puts a hand on his back. “Matts, you good?”

It takes a second for Auston to form words. “I- it hurts,” he says, head spinning. “I can’t-”

They take him off the ice after that, the ref supporting Auston’s weight even though he’s, like, five-seven, max.  

It doesn’t take much of the concussion protocol for them to figure that Auston got knocked pretty bad. As far as concussion go, he knows it could’ve been a lot worse – he’s still young, hasn’t had this happen before, won’t even have to miss more than a couple of weeks – but, fuck, it’s like a million migraines at once, he can’t _think_.

In whatever part of his brain is still paying attention, he registers the doctor telling him that he’s going to have to find someone to stay with him tonight.

“Marns’ll drive me home,” Auston says, digging his nails into his palm to avoid a wave of nausea. “He’ll stay, After the game. I can wait.”

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to – Mitch strolls in fifteen minutes later with a bloody nose and a rapidly blooming shiner.

It’s not too hard to put the pieces together, after that.

“Marns,” Auston says.

“You’re okay,” Mitch says, relief showing on his face like everything else he ever feels. “That’s good. Guess we’re both out, huh?”

 “Marns,” Auston says again, staring as Mitch takes a seat in the stall next to him, casual as anything. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t try to fight Zdeno Chara.”

“Sure,” Mitch says, way too agreeable for someone with that much bloody tissue sticking out of his nose. “I mean, it’ll be a lie, but I can for sure tell you that.” He tugs at the laces of his skates, not looking at Auston, too deliberate.

“You’re so stupid,” Auston gapes. “Mitch, you’re _so_ stupid.”

Mitch peeks up at him, almost defiant. “So what?”

“What were you even- like, defending my honour or something, what even-”

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

“I don’t need you to look out for me, Mitch.”

“Tough.” Mitch gets up and brings his skates over to his stall.

He stands there for long enough that Auston thinks he’s going to leave. The locker room is quiet.

Mitch comes back, eventually. Sits down, not back in the other stall, but right in Auston’s so that their thighs end up pressed together. He doesn’t even look pissed at getting yelled at.

“Sorry,” Auston says anyways.

Mitch shrugs, taps on Auston’s leg like ‘it’s okay’. “Bet the fight looked pretty cool, though, right?”

“No,” Auston says flatly. “He probably didn’t notice you hitting him ‘til he looked at the jumbotron.” 

“Wow,” Mitch says, “break my fucking heart, why don’t you, Matthews.”

He’s grinning, but there’s something else there. Like, something else in addition to the blood and bruising, Auston means.

For a few seconds, it’s quiet. Then Auston shakes his head, small. “Why would you even think that was a good idea, Mitch?”

“He hurt you,” Mitch says, like it’s that easy, cause and effect. “We look out for each other. That’s what you and me do.”

“You’re so stupid,” Auston says again, only the harshness of the message is kind of undercut by the fact that he leans forward, a hand on either side of Mitch’s face, and kisses him.

In retrospect, it’s probably a bad decision. Auston mostly gets a face full of Mitch’s bloody Kleenex, which is gross on _so_ many levels, and the sudden movement triggers a wave of nausea that almost makes him black out. The kiss lasts for all of a second ‘til they both pull back.

“Ew,” Auston says, head spinning, at the same time as Mitch winces and says, “Ow.”

Mitch opens his mouth like he’s going to make a joke; then their eyes meet, and it’s like they both realize at once what just Auston just did. Mitch’s mouth snaps shut.

And. Holy _fuck_ what did he just do?

Mitch is staring at him like he just grew an extra head. His hand has drifted up, touching his lips like he doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

“You-”

“Yeah.” Auston says, because he’s apparently going for broke, today. “Do you-”

“Yeah,” Mitch cuts in, breathless, and it’s like once he’s started talking he can’t stop. “Yes, holy crap, since, like, the second I met you. Is that really lame? It is. I don’t care. I want to kiss you again.”

“I want to kiss you all the time,” Auston admits, not caring how pathetic he sounds because Mitch _likes_ him. He’s liked him since the second they met. He feels like he’s floating. That part might be because of the concussion. “It’s pretty inconvenient.”

Somewhere along the line, Mitch has grabbed Auston’s hands, entwining their fingers and drumming on Auston’s knuckles like he doesn’t realize what he’s doing. “Bro, _same_!” 

Auston makes a face. “Maybe don’t call me ‘bro’ right after we kissed.”

“Bro,” Mitch says, sing song, swinging their joined hands and sounding as giddy as Auston feels. “Bro, bro, bro-”

There’re definitely rules about kissing someone after a concussion.

Auston’s going to break _all of them_.

 


End file.
